


home from omelas

by hollimichele



Series: the dogfather au [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Gen, also it gets meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-13 10:43:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21493021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollimichele/pseuds/hollimichele
Summary: In the best of all possible worlds, there would never be a need for Harry to walk into the Forbidden Forest with a Snitch clutched in his hand and dread coiled around his heart.
Series: the dogfather au [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1288478
Comments: 182
Kudos: 3147
Collections: Anodyne fics





	home from omelas

In the best of all possible worlds, there would never be a need for Harry to walk into the Forbidden Forest with a Snitch clutched in his hand and dread coiled around his heart.

In such a world, a better world, the man who was once Tom Riddle would have been defeated long before there was any need for a boy to die to protect the people he loved. Harry might have shrugged that shadow off years ago: at the Department of Mysteries, or in the Chamber of Secrets, or simply as he slept peacefully in his own bed one night, while grown-ups somewhere far away ensured the safety of his childhood. 

Perhaps, in the best of all possible worlds, Harry would never even have a scar, or a night spent in a basket on his aunt’s doorstep. Perhaps he would have been raised by the parents he was born to, knowing the night they nearly died for him only as a thrilling story. Perhaps, in such a world, he grew up in perfect safety, loved and cherished.

Or perhaps we could do better. Why would James and Lily Potter have to go into hiding, in the best of all possible worlds? Why would there ever be a war for them to fight? Maybe, in the best of all possible worlds, they had seven easy, uncomplicated years at Hogwarts, without the shadow of their futures hanging over them. Maybe Lily was happy in her work for all of her long life, developing potions alongside the best friend of her childhood, going home each day to her beloved husband and son. Maybe the grudges of their schoolboy years were something Harry’s uncles laughed at over Christmas dinner, all four of them: Sirius, Remus, Peter and Sev.

Perhaps there never was a war because Merope Gaunt found someone who could love her back. Perhaps there never was a Tom Riddle, and the boy he might have been was never alone, never unloved, never made to fear death. Perhaps he was a moderating force in the Wizengamot -- _ very fine family, the Gaunts, you know; I hear his father was a Muggle, but he turned out all right_. Perhaps he grew old, and doted on his grandchildren.

But the best of all possible worlds can’t leave anyone out, of course. If Harry was raised by his birth parents, whose mother would Caroline be? Would she and Tim learn to be content unto themselves, childless? Would they be someone else’s parents instead, someone who might otherwise have grown up alone and unloved, were this not the best of all possible worlds?

Perhaps, one day, weeks before the fourth miscarriage, Caroline sat at a table in a cafe, hoping to keep a cup of tea down for long enough to feel a little better. Perhaps her waiter saw how ill she looked. Perhaps her waiter was a wizard, and knew illness very well himself. Perhaps, seized by sympathy, he slipped some helpful potion into her teacup. 

Perhaps there never was a fourth miscarriage. Perhaps, a few months later, Caroline was a mother. Perhaps, eleven years after that, a letter arrived for the MacIntyres, written in green ink. Perhaps that child made a great many friends at Hogwarts, and Harry was among them, and there was nothing remarkable at all about being friends with Harry Potter. Perhaps they both played Quidditch with Merope Gaunt’s great-grandchildren, and none of them ever knew war.

If Caroline ever crossed paths with Remus again, neither of them would remember the day he made for her the best of all possible worlds. It would have been an ordinary sort of day, for him. He would have gone home to Sirius, just as he always did. He would have been fired after a few full moons of missed shifts, just as he always was.

On second thought: in the best of all possible worlds, Remus would never be a werewolf.

This is the tricky part. The best of all possible worlds, for one person, might be the worst for someone else. Growing up as the son of Tim and Caroline was so much better, for Harry, than so many other possibilities, and no worse than most of the rest. He would never choose the version of his life where he slept in the cupboard under the stairs -- but what if you told him _ that _ was the best of all possible worlds for his aunt and uncle? What if you asked him to choose between the world where he was adopted, and loved, and happy, and Petunia and Vernon were murdered, and the world where he was none of those things but they were alive?

If you offered Harry a choice between being Tim and Caro’s son or being James and Lily’s, how would he choose? Whose heart would he break?

But these were not the choices Harry had to face. This was not the best of all possible worlds, even if it was a better world for some. And Harry still had to walk into the forest.

He didn’t want to do it. No version of him ever did, ever would. But he did. He found the Stone in the snitch, and turned it over in his hand, and four dead shades appeared before him.

“You’ve been so brave,” Lily told him.

“You are nearly there,” said James. He told Harry he was proud of him, that they all were. He and Harry were exactly the same height.

“Does it hurt?” Harry asked.

“Dying? Not half so much as living does,” said Professor Snape. He looked younger by far than Harry had ever seen him in life.

“So dramatic, still,” said the fourth shade. “Don’t listen to him, Harry. It will be quick, he wants it over.”

“I didn’t want you to die,” Harry said. He tried to apologize, but the fourth shade cut him off.

“I’m sorry too,” said Petunia Dursley, who once was Petunia Evans, who once looked into Harry’s sleeping face in a basket on her doorstep and thought: _ if I keep him, I will come to hate him_. “I would have liked to know my son. I hope he’s lived a happy life.”

Harry knew what he had to do. He learned it long ago. It was the last thing Lily and James ever taught him: how to die for someone you loved. And he loved so many people, in this world that was not, perhaps, the best one possible, but which had always been more than enough for him. He went to his death. It was no harder than it would have been, if he had known less love in his short life, and no easier.

They stayed with him, all four, until the very end.

The rest you know. It was not the end, for Harry, after all. It was a world where Albus Dumbledore could admit to his failures in a place that was not really a train station, where Narcissa Malfoy loved her son more than anything in any world. It was a world where the house-elves marched into the fray, and Neville Longbottom was the bravest of Gryffindors, and Millicent Bulstrode stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Seamus Finnegan, flinging hexes at Death Eaters. It was not the best of all possible worlds, but it was good enough for a victory, and a future.

Months later, after the funerals, the trials, the clean-up; after a trip to Australia to retrieve Monica and Wendell Wilkins, and their in-laws Chris and Tiffany; after Harry’s parents were themselves again and had, mostly, forgiven him for sending them away -- after all of that, Harry MacIntyre walked up to a gate with a sign on it.

The sign said BEWARE OF DOGS. Harry ignored it, and stepped through, and knocked on the door that lay beyond.

There was an immediate chorus of wheezy barking and paw-thumps. Eventually, the door opened, and a stocky, fair-haired young man looked suspiciously out at Harry. Behind him, at least four bulldogs tried desperately to worm their way past the young man’s legs, presumably so they could lick Harry to death.

“No solicitors,” he said.

“Yes, I know,” said Harry. “Are you Dudley Dursley?”

“Yeah,” he said. “What d’you want?”

“I think we might be cousins,” Harry said.

Dudley’s brow furrowed. “Dunno, mate,” he said, looking Harry over: his black hair and green eyes and brown skin. Dudley’s eyes were blue, and he looked nothing like the narrow-shouldered girl who stood next to Lily in Harry’s old pictures. “I think you’re on the wrong track. Don’t have any cousins, anyway.”

“I take after my birth dad,” Harry said. He held out the little album, with copies of his pictures in it. “But my birth mum was Lily Evans, your mother Petunia’s sister. She and her husband died when I was a baby, and I was adopted.”

Dudley took the album, and opened it. His brow furrowed further, and then cleared. “Huh,” he said. “Aunt Marge never said Mum’s sister had a kid. You’d better come in. Mind the dogs, they bark like anything but they’re all pushovers, really.”

If you asked Dudley to choose, between the world he knew and the world where he grew up with his parents and his cousin, where he was spoiled and Harry was despised, how could he possibly decide? What would be the best of all possible worlds, for him? Would he feel better, knowing the alternatives? Would he wish to be that other version of himself?

How lucky, then, that he would never have to choose. How lucky, that he would never have to wonder if his happiness came at the cost of someone else’s pain.

This was not the best of all possible worlds. None of them were, not really, not for everyone. 

But that was fine. This one was good enough. Harry’s scar didn’t hurt, and all was well.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the ending I've been imagining for this AU for... kind of a while, now, and I'm really glad that I made it. I may still have some stories left to tell in this setting, but I wanted to get here first, and make sure you know that things turn out okay for this version of Harry. Come find me at nonasuch on tumblr, if you want to yell about wizards with me.


End file.
